Pp 26-27 You’ve Got to be
Kidding:
Geoffrey Macnab investigates the appeal of Dutch youth ﬁlms in the
international marketplace

in that it describes the universal,
and not just the Dutch, condition.
Esther Rots is another exceptional
ﬁlmmaker whose Can Go Through
Skin, selected for Forum in 2009,
was shocking in its originality and
extraordinary in what it achieved.

Dutch co-production The Devil’s Double

Pp 28-29 Short Cuts:
P 6 Image preview:

Dutch industry news

Directorial newcomers Elbert van Strien
and Jaap van Heusden

P30 Just the Facts:

P 7 Image Preview:

The international performance of Dutch
ﬁlms in 2010

Loft director Antoinette Beumer

P31 A Star is Born:
Pp 8-9 Co-production
Matters:
SEE NL talks to three Dutch producers
who successfully source production
funds abroad

The Netherlands’ Shooting Star at Berlin
2011, Sylvia Hoeks, talks to See NL
about her craft

P32 A Lifetime in a Year:
Lotte Verbeek’s stratospheric career
since Nothing Personal and her Shooting Star presentation in 2010

Right now the Netherlands has a
surprisingly large number of ﬁlmmakers making original, highly
individual, very artistic ﬁlms. That
is not the image we had of Dutch
ﬁlm from the recent past, when
most of what we saw was a series
of untranslatable comedies that
were so Dutch as to be rendered
unexportable.

Pp 14-15 First Time for Two:
First-time helmers Elbert van Strien and
Jaap van Heusden talk to SEE NL

Yes, Dutch ﬁlmmaking has
moved on a long way - but the
strange thing is this. What makes
the Dutch new wave so original is
that these ﬁlmmakers have nothing in common. Or at least nothing other than their uniqueness,
their inventiveness and their
ability to tell interesting stories
to international, not just Dutch,
audiences.

Pp 16-17 Pitch Perfect:
First stop CineMart. Three Dutch
projects embark upon their development
and production journey

Pp 18-19 Lofty Ambition:
2010 was a stellar year for Antoinette
Beumer with two local box-ofﬁce hits.
She talks with SEE NL

P 20 To Be Frank:
Actor Frank Lammers talks about his
Berlin Bullhead and how acting got him
all the girls

Take Nanouk Leopold for example whose second ﬁlm, Guernsey,
was selected for the Quinzaine
in 2005 and whose Wolfsbergen
was selected for Berlin Forum in
2007. This year we selected her
Brownian Movement to screen in
the Forum. It is a powerful and
masterful ﬁlm from a great ﬁlmmaker.

P21 Bokma in Berlin:
Homegrown star Pierre Bokma on the
Berlinale competition ﬁlm Sleeping
Sickness and on his relationship with
the late Theo van Gogh

But these are all ﬁlmmakers who
differ greatly in their approach to
their craft, and who have, during
their short careers to date, developed their own highly unique and
idiosyncratic styles.
I am not an expert on Dutch matters but I feel there must be a new
way of thinking about cinema in
the Netherlands and some kind
of incentive that brings all these
people together to make ﬁlms
that are much more universal and
so much better than what we have
been offered in the past.
It’s not just about investment.
It’s a movement. It’s about ﬁlmmakers being connected, about
sharing the common experience
of seeing ﬁlms in the cinemas or
discussing them within cinematic
publications, of which there are
excellent examples in the Netherlands.
It seems to me that there is a
common spirit among Dutch
ﬁlmmakers these days. They have
broad minds and they share a
wonderful sense of aesthetics.
It is very surprising that in a
Forum programme of just 35 international titles we should select
three Dutch ﬁlms in 2009 and two
more this year. That, I believe,
speaks volumes about the new
wave of Dutch ﬁlmmaking talent.

Likewise, Tom Fassaert’s
documentary An Angel in Doel is
another excellent ﬁlm, also in Forum, and like Brownian Movement

2

EYE_SEENL_02_v06_cl.indd 2

26-01-2011 10:26:11

Subtle Movement

Nanouk Leopold discusses her Forum ﬁlm
Brownian Movement
‘Somehow all my ﬁlms are about
the relationships between people
and how far you can stretch them
before they break.’

Co-producing Berlinale selection The Devil’s Double
‘This was obviously an amazing story. It’s about a man being
forced to lose his identity and
ﬁghting to regain it. That made it
wonderful and universal and not
just another ﬁlm about Iraq.’

Debutant directors Elbert van Strien
and Jaap van Heusden
Remake rights to Van Strienâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
Two Eyes Staring have been
optioned by Hollywood star
Charlize Theron and van Strien
himself is now being courted by
Hollywood agents and producers.

Co-production
Matters
With stringent cuts being applied across all Dutch arts
sectors, ﬁlmmakers from the
Netherlands are advised to
look beyond their borders to
ﬁnd production ﬁnance. Nick
Cunningham talks to three
seasoned practitioners of the
art of co-pro.

the Netherlands Film Fund alone.
A worry for Bosklopper was the
German tv sale, without which
the path to German fund money
would have been blocked but the
German tv rights were eventually
sold to broadcaster 3sat, thus allowing clear access to NRW and
FFA funding.

Leontine Petit of Lemming Film,
one of the Netherlands’ most
proliﬁc production houses, sums
up the case for co-production
very neatly. ‘First it’s the money,’
she stresses. ‘Second, there is the
technical and artistic talent - and
locations - that Holland may not
be able to offer. Thirdly, co-production can offer artistic value
to the project. There is always a
cultural exchange.’ But the key to
everything, she maintains, if one
is to co-produce the highest quality ﬁlms, is to develop an effective
network of international contacts
that are, as well as eminently
trustworthy, both creative and
sympathetic.

Bosklopper is keen to harness
much of her co-production talent
for Nanouk Leopold’s next ﬁlm,
currently in development with
Isabella Films. The project, with
a working title of It’s All So Quiet,
is budgeted at €2.5 million. She
hopes to shoot late 2011/early
2012 and deliver the ﬁlm for early
2013.

Stienette Bosklopper, producer
of Nanouk Leopold’s Brownian
Movement concurs. ‘If you have
a partner who you know and who
is only working with the best
people, then you are offered access to this high-level talent as
well. That is a very important side
of co-production.’ The experience
of co-producing Brownian Movement was, therefore, a harmonious one. The ﬁlm was budgeted
at €2.7 million and split between
the Netherlands, Germany and
Belgium on a 70/20/10 ratio,
including Eurimages funding. A
cool €1 million was sourced from

Alonso (Los Muertos, Fantasma,
Liverpool). So far she has produced without the support of the
Netherlands Film Fund, although
two of Lisandro’s ﬁlms qualiﬁed
for Hubert Bals Fund support,
administered through the IFFR
(Rotterdam Film Festival). ‘With
the last ﬁlm of Lisandro (Liverpool, 2007) , what we did was to
get money from the national fund
in Argentina,’ she comments.
‘But co-production is essential.
The money from the originating
country is never enough.’

‘I am always
like the spider
in the web’
In her capacity as head of the
Buenos Aires Film Festival coproduction market Hughan has,
like Bosklopper and Petit, built
a network of co-producers to
whom she returns and feels very
comfortable collaborating with.
These include the French production company Slot Machine,
Eddie Saeta Producciones (Spain)
and sales agent The Match Factory. ‘Producing is one thing, but
co-producing is a profession in
itself. You only learn through a
lot of experience, and you can
only be successful if you are able
to build up an extensive international network. I am always like
the spider in the web, the leading
co-producer, trying to raise the
interest of other producers and
make the co-production puzzle ﬁt
for everybody involved.’

Like Bosklopper, Petit turned ﬁrst
to her trusted international partners when developing her three
co-productions in 2010, Tony Ten
(NL/Belgium/Germany), The President (NL/Hungary/Belgium, shot
in Hungary and Morocco) and the
youth ﬁlm Eep!, a Dutch/Belgian/
Swedish collaboration. Her longstanding relationships with Belgian company A Private View and
the German outﬁts Ma.Je.De and
Egoli Tossell, were forged over a
decade ago during ACE and EAVE
programmes and have remained
sound ever since.
The example of Dutch producer
Ilse Hughan is altogether different. Although she lives and works
part of the year in Amsterdam,
Hughan has so far produced her
ﬁlms exclusively out of Buenos
Aires, her most notable director
being the acclaimed arthouse
Argentinian ﬁlmmaker Lisandro

Right now Petit is working with
Ma.Je.De on Victor Kossakovsky’s
ambitious documentary Vivan
las Antipodas!, while Bosklopper, who worked with Romanian
producer Ada Solomon on Radu
Jude’s award-winning The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), is
hopeful that the Netherlands
Film Fund will contribute towards a 20% stake in Jude’s next
ﬁlm Everybody in our Family.
On the face of it, now seems the
best time to make such a request
as the Netherlands Film Fund
is increasing its investment in
minority co-productions from
2011 to €1.8 million from €1.5
million in 2010. The Fund’s head
of co-production Ger Bouma is
conﬁdent that this will mean
minority support can be granted
to up to fourteen international
titles this year. ‘Our aim is to help
producers build up an extensive
international network,’ he claims.
‘This also counts for the Fund
itself. We invest in our relations
with other funds we already work
closely with, and seek further contact with funds from other countries in order to get more Dutch
productions co-ﬁnanced.’

Subtle
Movement
Nanouk Leopold’s Brownian
Movement, which screens
in the avant-garde Forum
section at Berlinale 2011, is
a sophisticated portrait of a
marriage in crisis following a
wife’s inﬁdelity conducted in
bizarre circumstances. Melanie Goodfellow speaks to the
ﬁlmmaker.
In the opening scenes of the
ﬁlm, Charlotte rents a sparsely
furnished apartment in Brussels
and starts entertaining men she
meets through her job as doctor
at a local hospital. The reason for
her behaviour is hard to fathom.
On the surface, Charlotte lives a
charmed life. She has a ﬂourishing career, an attractive, successful architect husband and a
beautiful son.
The men she brings back to the
ﬂat by comparison are ﬂawed in
some way: one is inﬁrm, another
obese, another particularly hairy.
Charlotte appears fascinated by
their imperfections. Her betrayal
of her husband Max is a cold, calculated act, not the result of some
chance meeting.
The couple struggle to keep their
relationship together following
the revelation of Charlotte’s actions. Will a move from Brussels
to India where the husband is
working on a restoration project
help them rebuild their life together?
The mystery of personal desires,
betrayal, commitment and individual needs versus the compro-

mises demanded by life in a couple or a family are just some of the
themes colliding in the ﬁlm, and
indeed are to be found in many of
Leopold’s previous works such as
Wolfsbergen which also screened
in Forum, in 2007.

French Marguerite Duras as key
inﬂuences in the stripped down
style of her own work. ‘I think
these writers inﬂuenced me more
than ﬁlmmakers,’ she reveals,
commenting on Coetzee. ‘I enjoy
his writing style. It’s minimalistic,
not too many words, very short
sentences, very clear. There is a
harshness in his storytelling.’

‘Somehow all my ﬁlms are about
the relationships between people
and how far you can stretch them
before they break. For me it is a
love story. It might be difﬁcult to
see it that way because it is also
about two people who are very
alienated from each other. The
question is can they ﬁnd each other again and will it do any good for
them to do so,’ says Leopold.

‘Somehow all my
ﬁlms are about
the relationships
between people
and how far
you can stretch
them before they
break’

The title Brownian Movement
takes its cue from the theory
surrounding the random movement of particles suspended in a
solution. ‘Robert Brown discovered the irregular movements
are based on little collisions with
the atoms that are in the liquid
or gas,’ explains Leopold. ‘In the
ﬁlm, I explore how sometimes
your life takes another turn, and
even though you can’t see it there
is a reason for this change of direction.’

‘One woman who saw the ﬁlm
wrote to me and said it reminded
her of the works of Marguerite
Duras. This was a great compliment for me. She was one of
my favourite writers when I was
young. There is a simplicity in
her writing that I try to emulate
in ﬁlm... I try to make ﬁlms that
aren’t there,’ adds Leopold.

Another key element of ﬁlmmaking for Leopold is the look of the
ﬁlm and the space in which is
shot. Leopold and her long-time
collaborator, production designer
Elsje de Bruijn, spent months
seeking the right backdrops.
Key locations include one of Le
Corbusier’s housing complexes
in France and The Mill Owners
building in the Indian city of
Ahmedabad in India.
‘My former education was in art. I
was taught about creating spaces
and the function of spaces and
the way in which they can create
certain emotions,’ she explains.
‘Locations for me are the most
important part of the ﬁlm. For
example, I couldn’t make the ﬁlm
unless I had the right room for
the opening scenes. I try to create
emotions by creating a certain environment, it may sound strange
but the face is the last thing I want
to use to create an emotion.’

The success of this attempt in
Brownian Movement rests in no
small part on the performance of
German actress Sandra Hüller,
who came to Leopold’s attention
in Hans-Christian Schmid’s 2006
ﬁlm Requiem, about an epileptic
woman’s mental breakdown in
the hands of a traditional priest.
‘I went to Berlin to try out some
scenes and I saw immediately
what she could do with her
face... she’s amazing,’ comments
Leopold.

As is characteristic of Leopold’s
work, dialogue is sparse. Leopold allows facial expressions
and body language to convey
the drama of a situation. ‘In the
beginning, I wrote more dialogue
but cut quite a bit out during the
rehearsals. We found there was a
lot we didn’t need,’ she says.
Leopold cites writers such as
South African J.M. Coetzee and

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26-01-2011 10:27:00

‘I was taught about
creating spaces and the
function of spaces and
the way in which they can
create certain emotions’

Devil in
Disguise
The Devil’s Double, selected
for 2011 Berlin Panorama, tells
the extraordinary story of Latif
Yahia, the Iraqi army lieutenant who became the stand-in
for Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein’s sadistic son, Uday.
This is a big €15 million international movie, shot in
English and with a director
(in Lee Tamahori) who once
helmed a James Bond movie.
Geoffrey Macnab reports.

It is also a ﬁlm in which the
Dutch connection isn’t immediately apparent. However,
if it hadn’t been for Amsterdam-based producers Emjay
Rechsteiner and Michael John
Fedun, the project almost
certainly would not have been
made. Flash back several years
to when Rechsteiner’s Staccato
Films and Fedun’s Corrino Media Group bid for the rights to
Yahia’s book.
‘This was obviously an amazing
story. It’s about a man being
forced to lose his identity and
ﬁghting to regain it. That made
it wonderful and universal and
not just another ﬁlm about
Iraq,’ Rechsteiner recalls of
the book.

the entire story.’ He revealed all
of the details that were not yet
in the book.’

scout for directors. Lee Tamahori,
director of the award-winning
Maori drama Once Were Warriors
(1994) as well as Bond vehicle Die
Another Day (2002) seemed an obvious candidate. He could handle
intense dramatic scenes as well
as action and was used to working
with biggish budgets. ‘We had a
wonderful meeting with him, Michael Fedun and I, and he (Tamahori) blew us away. He said this
was going to be the next Scarface!
He didn’t want to tone down the
violence. He said it had to be very
visceral and that was exactly what
we had envisioned ourselves.’

The Dutch producers had to bid
against a number of American
ﬁlm studios for the rights. Fortunately, they had a private investor
behind them, Arjen Terpstra, who
enabled them to compete on level
terms. Yahia liked their approach
to the subject matter. They were
treating the story as a psychological thriller while the Hollywood
studios saw the project more as
an action movie. ‘No matter how
ﬂattering that was to Latif, it was
not the direction that he wanted
his life story to be portrayed,’
says Rechsteiner.

‘He said this was
going to be the
next Scarface’

Rechsteiner had come up with an
initial treatment based on Latif’s
book and on the interviews over
three consecutive days that the
producers had conducted with
him. (This treatment and subsequent development had been
supported by the Netherlands
Film Fund.) They then recruited
screenwriter Michael Thomas,
best known for his screenplay for
Michael Caton Jones’ Scandal.

The producers met Yahia when
he turned up in Amsterdam in
his bullet-proof vest. That was
just before Saddam Hussein
was tracked down in his pit
hole.

‘He wrote this really rock and roll
script...Michael is an older surf
hippie who writes in a very cartooneseque way,” the producer jokes
of his screenwriter. “It’s almost as
if you are reading a comic book.
It’s got all these whooshes and
whoops - these sounds - written
into it.’

‘Latif said with a big smile, ‘now
I ﬁnally feel at liberty to disclose

Once the script had been licked
into shape, the next step was to

For Dutch producers, putting
together a big international coproduction is a challenge. The
Netherlands does not have a tax
shelter or soft money scheme in
place to attract inward investment. ‘You are at a disadvantage
nowadays initiating a project,’
says Rechsteiner. In the case of
The Devil’s Double, the producers
were able to raise development
money at home but little else.

With Breuls on board, and with
his backing, the producers were
able to offer key talent ‘pay or
play’ deals and thereby to draw
the production together and set
a deﬁnite start date. ‘He (Breuls)
puts his money where his mouth
is. He lived up to his commitment
right away.’
The ﬁlm was largely shot in
Malta, where it was eligible for
the Maltese cash rebate (worth up
to 22% of EU qualifying expenditure.) Post-production was done
in Antwerp. Now, the ﬁlm will
launch at Sundance and in Berlin
following the ﬁlm’s selection at
both festivals.
Corsan is handling international
sales with the help of agents CAA
and Paradigm. The strategy has
been to make the distributors
wait. ‘We have not shown the ﬁlm
to anyone….they (the buyers) will
all see it at the same time,’
Rechsteiner concludes.

‘Having said that, this turned
out to be such a hot property that
once the script was developed,
the American agencies did open
the doors for us and enabled us
to meet with the directors we
wanted,’ Rechsteiner remembers.
The key move was approaching Belgian producer/ﬁnancier
Paul Breuls, who runs the sales
and production outﬁt Corsan.

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DIRECTOR PROFILE

First time
Lucky
Two ﬁrst-time directors from
the Netherlands made an enormous impact with their debut
features in 2010, Elbert van
Strien whose Two Eyes
Staring turned heads in Hollywood, and Jaap van Heusden,
whose Win-Win reveals him
to be a keen chronicler of our
times. Geoffrey Macnab spoke
to both ﬁlmmakers
Elbert Van Strien isn’t exactly a
new face on the Dutch ﬁlm scene.
Now in his mid-40s, he graduated
from the Dutch Film Academy in
1993 and was nominated for a student Oscar in 1994. However, the
success of his debut feature, supernatural thriller Two Eyes Staring (Zwart Water, 2010) has given
his career a huge boost. Remake
rights to the ﬁlm have been optioned by Hollywood star Charlize
Theron and van Strien himself is
now being courted by Hollywood
agents and producers.
Two Eyes Staring, which van
Strien co-wrote with Paulo van
Vliet, has its roots in occurrences
in van Strien’s own life. A decade
or so ago, when he was at a very
low ebb, he visited an alternative therapist who told him that
a deceased relative was ‘with me
and didn’t go away.’ Van Strien
was sceptical and dismissive of
her claims. However, at the age
of eight he had had an uncanny
experience following the death
of his brother (who seemed to
appear to him at a window at
the very moment of his death). ‘I
don’t believe in ghosts,’ he says
but acknowledges that the eerie

and irrational are rich realms for
ﬁlmmakers to explore.
In 2003, Van Strien founded Accento Films with Claudia Brandt.
In the run-up to Two Eyes Staring, he made several short ﬁlms,
among them Still World (2005), a
short consisting of stills that was
shown at MOMA in New York.
(He describes it as ‘a story about
a journalist of a local newspaper
who discovers a conspiracy of
mediocrity.’)
Van Strien produced Two Eyes
Staring as well as writing and
directing it. ‘I have a speciﬁc type
of ﬁlm I love to make – intelligent,
genre ﬁlms with deeper layers of
philosophical and moral questions underpinning them,’ he
says of his multi-taskingapproach. Ask the writer-director
why it took him so long to make
his debut feature and he explains
that the genre projects that he
likes to make are simply not in
vogue in the Netherlands.
‘It’s very difﬁcult to get these sort
of stories off the ground in
Holland.’ Broadcasters and ﬁnanciers, he suggests, are wary of
such ﬁlms. He and Brandt therefore decided to go their own way
at Accento. ‘It is a good position
to be in because I am not dependent on other producers now,’
he suggests.

As a kid, young Dutch auteur Jaap
van Heusden used to dream of becoming an economist. He was obsessed with numbers and balance
sheets. ‘When I was 12, 13 and 14,
I was very much inspired by economic systems and theories.’ He
realized early that economics is
‘the axis on which society turns.’
Van Heusden’s debut feature
Win-Win, a cautionary tale set
during the credit crunch, reﬂects
the director’s youthful obsessions. It’s about a brilliant young
assistant at an investment bank
whose relish for number crunching makes him a star trader. He is
overwhelmed by his own success
and confused by the superﬁcial
values of the trading ﬂoor.

storytelling in West Africa,
old age, the cut and thrust of
the ﬁnancial world. One new
project Bara is about a delinquent in a young offender’s
institute. Another, U.M., is
about a Dutch air hostess desperate to become a mother
who strikes up an unlikely
relationship with a boy living
on the streets of Kiev.
However, the young director
pinpoints thematic overlaps
in his work: he is fascinated
by characters ‘locked into
limited space’ and always
tries to probe away at what
he calls ‘the intensity of their
daily life and their inner
journey.’

Last year, the Rotterdam Festival
heard early about the movie (originally made for TV, but subsequently released theatrically and
on dvd in the Benelux by Cinema
Delicatessen) and put it in the
programme even before they had
seen a ﬁnished version.
Thirty one year-old van Heusden
is especially proud of the performance he elicited from the brilliant young Belgian actor Oscar
Van Rompay as the trader. When
Win-Win screened last summer at
the Brooklyn International Film
Festival, van Rompay picked up
the Best Actor award. ‘This was
my ﬁrst feature. I am not so old
myself. Oscar van Rompay had
not been in front of the camera
for even one hour – so the producer and broadcasting company
were not completely convinced
at the beginning. But when I met
Oscar for the ﬁrst time, I really
thought – wow! What a powerful
guy.’ The award in Brooklyn, he
adds, was vindication both for
him and for his lead actor.
Over the last decade, the young
director has directed ﬁction and
documentary. He acknowledges
that he has covered many different subjects – terminal illness,
Win-Win Director: Jaap van Heusden Script:
Jaap van Heusden Production: IJswater Films

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26-01-2011 10:27:36

CINEMART PROFILE

Perfect Pitch
Three Dutch projects were
pitched at the International
Film Festival Rotterdam’s
CineMart co-production
market this January: veteran
ﬁlmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s darkly comic Camiel
Borgman, Esther Rot’s eagerly
awaited second feature Metafysica and debut feature The
Sky Above Us from Marinus
Groothof. Melanie Goodfellow
investigates.
Camiel Borgman, a story that
follows a band of half-devils, or
fallen angels, who descend to
earth in the guise of ordinary mortals to strengthen their numbers,
wreaking havoc in their wake, is
Van Warmerdam’s fourth project
to be pitched at CineMart. ‘For me
the ﬁrst reason to take a project
to CineMart is because it brings it
alive. Once it has been presented
there it exists,’ says Marc van
Warmerdam, the director’s producer and brother.
Van Warmerdam says the script
has prompted a mixed response.
‘There are those who see it as really dark, far darker than anything
Alex has done in the past. Then
there are those who see it as the
funniest thing he has ever done...
Alex sees the light side of it. Of
course, it’s harder to push something that is perceived as being
dark, over something that is lighthearted. We’ll see.’
The producer thanks CineMart
for putting Graniet, the company
he runs with Alex, in touch with
the Wallonian Le Parti Production which co-produced Waiter
(2007) and The Last Days of Emma
Blank (2009). The Brussels-based

company is expected to board this
production too but due to changes in the way in which production
funding is meted out in Belgium,
Graniet is also looking for a Flemish partner this time around. Van
Warmerdam says the company is
also interested in ﬁnding French
and Scandinavian partners.

ments as yet. We’re also looking
at other possibilities. The main
character is Dutch but I’m not
set on the nationality of the other
characters. They could be German
or maybe Slavic. I am quite open
on that,’ comments Rots.
Metafysica is eagerly awaited following the success of Rots’ debut
ﬁlm Can Go Through Skin about
a woman who ﬂees the city to a
dilapidated house in the countryside following a brutal assault.
That ﬁlm premiered to critical
acclaim at Berlin’s Forum in 2009
and won her a mention in Take
100: The Future of Film, a roundup of the top emerging ﬁlm directors from around the world. ‘It all
helps but I feel like the stakes are
higher this time around,’ comments a modest Rots.

‘There are a few territories which
are more interested in Alex’s ﬁlms
than others and Scandinavia,
alongside Russia and Eastern
Europe, is one of them. The ﬁlm
is a Dutch ﬁlm but it would be
possible to shoot it somewhere
else and we’re also considering
looking at Scandinavian actors,’
he notes.
Beyond Le Parti Production, sales
agent Fortissimo is also attached.
The company, which has handled
nearly all of Van Warmerdam’s
ﬁlms, will be pushing pre-sales at
Berlin. The producer is looking
to secure 35-45% of the projected
€3.94 million budget through coproductions, international funds
and pre-sales.

‘For me the ﬁrst
reason to take a
project to CineMart is because
it brings it alive

Director Esther Rots and her producers Stienette Bosklopper of
Circe Film and Hugo Rots of Rots
Filmwerk are seeking German
and Belgian co-producers for the
helmer’s second ﬁlm Metafysica
about a Dutch woman who becomes involved with Berlin-based
political extremists in an attempt
to give her life some purpose. The
ﬁlm, budgeted at €2.08 million,
has already received development
support from the Netherlands
Film Fund.

‘The ﬁlm looks at how people
tried to keep going about their everyday lives while in an extreme or
absurd situation,’ says producer
Sander Verdonk of LEV Pictures
who speaks with passion about
the project, budgeted at €1.4 million.
Verdonk has already been busy
drumming up partners for the
ﬁlm through EAVE and at the Holland Film Meeting of the Netherlands Film Festival. Co-production companies already signed
up for the project include Serbian
outﬁt Art & Popcorn, German Unaﬁlm and Croatian Masmas. LEV
is hoping to ﬁnd a sales agent,
distributors and further funding
possibilities during CineMart.
Beyond the ﬁlm, LEV is also building a multi-lingual internet site
aimed at everyone in and around
Belgrade, which will present
the true life stories behind the
ﬁctional story of the ﬁlm. ‘We’ve
done so much research, spoken
to so many people, people who
lost family members. We’ve heard
so many stories but we cannot
put them all in the ﬁlm so we will
try to incorporate these into a
multiplatform approach,’ reveals
Verdonk.

The third Dutch project at Cinemart is Marinus Groothof’s debut
feature The Sky Above Us, that
follows three intertwined lives in
Belgrade during the NATO bombings in 1999. The project was born
out of Groothof’s award-winning
short on the same subject Sunset
From a Rooftop which was shortlisted for the 2010 Academy
Awards. The project has also
received development support
from the Dutch Film Fund.

‘We are in talks with a German
partner but there are no commit-

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Esther Rots

Alex van Warmerdam

Marinus Groothof
(photo: Yvonne Witte)

(photo: Anuschka Blommers en Niels Schumm)

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DIRECTOR PROFILE

Lofty Ambition
It has been a busy 12 months
for Dutch director Antoinette
Beumer. The 48-year-old
Amsterdam-based ﬁlmmaker
became a household name in
2010 in the Netherlands following the box ofﬁce success
of tragicomedy The Happy
Housewife and the much
hyped thriller Loft. Melanie
Goodfellow speaks to the
director.
‘It’s been an exciting time. I’ve
had two ﬁlms in the cinema in
one year – that’s pretty unique if a
little stressful,’ says Beumer.
The Happy Housewife, starring
Carice van Houten as a wellheeled, suburban wife coming
to terms with motherhood, was
seen by more than 500,000 people
in the Netherlands following its
release in April 2010.
Following that, Loft attracted
some 100,000 spectators in the
ﬁrst two weeks after its release
mid-December. It is a remake of
Belgian director Eric Van Looy’s
2008 hit whodunit. The ﬁlm
follows ﬁve men implicated in
a murder after the body of a mystery woman is found in a pied-àterre they share to entertain their
mistresses.
Prior to her big screen success,
Beumer learned her directing
craft at the Amsterdam Theatre
School before moving into television. There, she worked on
popular series such as Goudkust
(Gold Coast), about life in a ﬁctitious, upscale town on the Dutch
coast, and Willemspark, a familyoriented comedy set against the
backdrop of one of Amsterdam’s

the time I thought it was funny
but second time round it really hit
me. I had changed in that period,’
comments Beumer.

wealthiest and most exclusive
suburbs.
‘Originally I wanted to be an actress but while at theatre school
I decided that what the director
was doing was much more interesting. In my third year, we did
some work with a camera and a
light bulb went off in my head,’
recalls Beumer.

Unusually, the producers had
already raised most of the ﬁlm’s
€2.1 million budget so Beumer
could focus on the business of
developing and shooting the
ﬁlm rather than worrying about
ﬁnance. ‘Normally in Holland
you have a script and no money.
Here, there was money but no
script,’ says Beumer. ‘I was free to
focus on making the ﬁlm. While
the writers were writing, I was
searching for locations and doing
casting sessions. We started working on the ﬁlm in April 2009 and it
premiered the following April.
We shot it in 26 days.’

‘Film school is focused on how
to shoot. Theatre school taught
me what to shoot. I did a lot of
acting before I started directing
and know the methods. I know
what it is like to be directed. I am
an actors’ director if you like,’ she
continues.

‘I know how to
plan and I’m not
afraid to work
with more than
one camera’

pays off. The actors have more
freedom, especially when there
is a big scene with a lot of actors,’
she explains.
Looking back over the success
of the last 12 months, Beumer
reﬂects that she is happy her big
screen break came relatively late
in her career. ‘I didn’t make my
ﬁrst ﬁlm until I was 47 years-old
and I’ve never felt sorry for that.
I think the ﬁlms I’ve made have
worked because I have so much
experience... I don’t think I would
have had the same results if I had
made them at the age 20,’” she
concludes.

Beumer was approached by the
producers of The Loft to direct the
ﬁlm after one of them saw a rough
cut of The Happy Housewife.

Beumer’s big screen break came
when she was approached by
Dutch production powerhouse
Eyeworks to develop and direct
The Happy Housewife. It is based
on an adaptation of Heleen van
Royen’s bestseller about a wealthy
young woman coping with postnatal depression.

‘She was impressed by the combination of drama and humour.
They also wanted someone who
could handle two genres in one
ﬁlm. It’s quite difﬁcult to put humour into a thriller,’ says Beumer.
‘It was a hugely exciting time
when they asked me to do the ﬁlm
but also pretty stressful because I
went straight out of post-production on one ﬁlm into pre-production on another.’

‘The producers liked the way my
television work combined drama
with humour. They were looking
for someone who could deal with
the heavy subject of post-natal
depression in a light way. I ﬁrst
read the book ten years ago just
after I’d had my second child. At

Beumer says her television work
came in useful when it came to
shooting the ﬁlm which features a
large, ensemble cast of seven men
and seven women. ‘I know how to
plan and I’m not afraid to work
with more than one camera. I did
that with both ﬁlms and it really

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Antoinette Beumer

‘I know what it is like
to be directed. I am
an actors’ director
if you like’

To Be Frank
Just before he was due to
begin work on Michael R
Roskam’s Berlinale bound
debut feature Rundskop (Bullhead), Dutch actor Frank Lammers broke his ankle playing
football. Not that this stopped
him playing the crumpled,
sleazy vet in Roskam’s very
intense drama set in the world
of the Belgian agricultural hormone maﬁa, explains Geoffrey
Macnab.
Lammers had given what he
thought was a lousy audition but
Roskam immediately hired him.
He clearly saw Lammers as the
type of powerful character actor
who could give the movie an extra
depth and intensity. For his part,
Lammers relished working in
rural Belgium.

I do all kinds of
stuff and I like
it… it’s fun to
explore your
own borders

The Dutch actor, who was on
crutches throughout shooting,
looked on with a mix of awe and
revulsion at movie’s lead actor,
Matthias Schoenaerts, who had
transformed himself into a hulklike ﬁgure by pumping iron and
eating vast quantities of food.
‘Gross!’ Lammers murmurs at the
transformation of his co-star. He
had already worked with Schoenaerts on Paul Verhoeven’s international hit Black Book (2006)
and enjoyed collaborating with
the Belgian actor again. The two
joined forces on two more ﬁlms,

Erik de Bruyn’s international
co-productions Nadine (2007)
and The President (2011) , before
meeting again on Roskam’s
ﬁlm. ‘I invite him (Schoenaerts)
to Holland and he invites me to
Belgium. We keep each other
working.’
Lammers, born in Southern Holland in 1972, is nothing if not
versatile. He is equally adept at
comedy (take his roles in Schnitzel
Paradise and Hush Hush Baby for
example) and in drama. He won
a Best Actor Golden Calf for the
ﬁlm Night Run, directed by Dana
Nechushtan and produced by Waterland Film. He has presented
TV shows and has even directed.
As if to underline his range, he
won an award last year for Best
Director of a stage musical in the
Netherlands (beating off Mary
Poppins in the process.) ‘I do all
kinds of stuff and I like it… it’s
fun to explore your own borders.
What I’d like to do the most is
heavy Ken Loach-like drama but,
especially in Holland, that’s very
difﬁcult.’
His career began in haphazard
fashion when he took part in a
play at high school. ‘All of a sudden I could pick up girls,’ is how
he explains his initial attraction
to acting. Lammers went to drama school in Amsterdam. Since
then, he has worked consistently
on ﬁlms and TV productions,
taking whichever opportunities
have come his way. ‘Life is what
happens to you when you’re busy
making other plans,’ he quips,
quoting John Lennon.

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ACTOR PROFILE

Bokma in Berlin
Emmy award-winning actor Pierre Bokma credits his
performance in the late Theo
Van Gogh’s Interview (2003)
with alerting German director
Ulrich Köhler to his abilities,
explains Geoffrey Macnab.
Köhler’s Sleeping Sickness, in
which Bokma stars, screens in
competition in Berlin.
When the two men met in Amsterdam, Köhler was surprised how
well Bokma spoke German. (During his army days, Bokma had
been stationed in Germany.) Even
before he had fully completed the
screenplay for Sleeping Sickness,
Köhler made it clear he wanted
Bokma to play one of the leads.
The ﬁlm, about western expatriates working in the humanitarian
sector in Africa, was eventually
shot in Cameroon, a problem
for Bokma who wasn’t ﬂuent in
French, despite being born in Paris. ‘It was quite a job!’ he recalls
of his struggles to master the dialogue. But whatever the linguistic
difﬁculties, Bokma relished his
three months in Cameroon and
describes the ﬁlm as one of the
highlights of his career.
Bokma’s early credits include Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books
(1991), in which he appeared
alongside acting legends John
Gielgud and Erland Josephson.
‘All these dwarves and elves! It
was quite a bizarre experience,”
he remembers.‘John Gielgud said
to all the Dutch actors, ‘oh, your
English is very good but don’t over
do it,’’ he says, imitating Gielgud
perfectly.

If it pays very
well and it’s shit,
I will not do it!
Interview (2003), made just a year
before Van Gogh’s murder. ‘To
put it bluntly, we didn’t like each
other,’ Bokma recalls of his early
encounters with the outspoken
ﬁlmmaker. ‘He had a tendency to
be a menace.’
After Van Gogh wrote an unﬂattering review of Bokma, accusing him of making jokes for his
fellow actors, Bokma responded
by telling him, ‘If you ever do
this again, I’ll rip off your head.’
A few months later, Van Gogh
apologised, and when he asked
Bokma to appear in Interview
the actor immediately accepted.
‘He thought I’d say absolutely no
fucking way! It was great. He was
a great director – an exquisite person in terms of thinking about political and philosophical issues.’
The 55-year-old actor remains in
demand on stage and screen. ‘But
I am not the one who’s pushing
things. I’ll wait to see what comes
my way. If it’s fun and I like it, I’ll
do it. If it pays very well and it’s
shit, I will not do it!’ he explains,
his philosophy in a nutshell.

Perhaps his best known ﬁlm internationally remains Van Gogh’s

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PRODUCTION OVERVIEW

Dutch Harvest
DUTCH
PRODUCTIONS
PRESENTED AT
BERLINALE 2011

ipt

GENERATION K+
COMPETITION
The Strongest Man in Holland

Bullhead

(De Sterkste Man van Nederland) Director: Mark de Cloe
Script: Pieter Bart Korthuis, Maarten Lebens Production:
NL Film
When Luke attends the local strongest man competition,
he suspects one of the participants to be the parent he
never knew.

(Rundskop) Director & Script: Michael R. Roskam
Production: Savage Film (B), Artémis Production (B),
Waterland Film (NL)
The investigation of a police murder leads to a confrontation between two old friends, separated by a tragic history.

FORUM
Brownian Movement

Director and Script: Nanouk Leopold Production:
Circe Films (NL) Sales: Films Distribution
A relationship between a woman and her husband is
tested when she lives out her secret, sexual fantasies.

‘Somehow all my ﬁlms are about the relationships between people and how far you can stretch them before
they break’ See page 10 for an interview with director
Nanouk Leopold

An Angel in Doel

‘I was immediately touched when I read the script for The
Strongest Man in Holland. It is a funny story that really hit
a nerve. A story which, in my opinion, is about relationships which are somehow incomplete.’ Mark de Cloe

‘I do all kinds of stuff and I like it… it’s fun to explore your
own borders.’ Frank Lammers See page 21 for an interview with Dutch star Frank Lammers

IN COMPETITION
Minority Co-production

IN PANORAMA
Minority Co-production

Sleeping Sickness

The Devil’s Double

(De Engel van Doel) Documentary Director and Script:
Tom Fassaert Production: SNG Film (NL) Language:
Flemish (English subtitles)
Facing the advancing Antwerp docks, the village of Doel
and its few remaining inhabitants struggle against the
inevitable.
‘In essence this ﬁlm is about the human struggle with his
own mortality, within the context of a dying village. About
a widow and an old village priest that try to hold on to
something that is slowly but certainly slipping away. And
about the humour and melancholy of everyday life within a
Flemish ghost-town.’ Tom Fassaert.

(Schlafkrankheit) Director and Script: Ulrich Köhler Producers: Komplizen Film GmbH (Ger), ö-Filmproduktion
(Ger), Why Not Productions (Fr), IDTV Film (NL)
A ﬁlm about western expatriates working in the humanitarian sector.
Director: Lee Tamahori Script: Michael Thomas Production: Corsan (B), Corrino Media Group and Staccato Films
(both NL) Sales: Corsan World Sales
The real-life story of the man forced to be the body-double
of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son in pre-war Baghdad
See page 12 for an interview with Dutch co-producer
Emjay Rechsteiner of Staccato Films

Bokma relished his three months in Cameroon and describes the ﬁlm as one of the highlights of his career.
‘It was quite a job!’ he recalls See page 20 for an interview with Dutch star Pierre Bokma

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26-01-2011 10:28:15

Bram is best friends with Haas, his cousin. Haas’ uncle Faris runs the pizzeria owned by Bram’s father. When the two seniors have a blazing row, Faris opens his own pizzeria across the
street which results, inevitably, in a pizza war between Bram and Haas ...

Our Grand Despair

Director: Seyﬁ Teoman Script: Barı Bıçakçi & Seyﬁ
Teoman Producers: Bulut Film, Circe Films (NL), Unaﬁlm
(Ger)
Ender and Cetin, two men in their late thirties, have been
close friends since high school. After being away for many
years, Cetin returns to Ankara, moves in with Ender, at
which point the two realize their childhood dream…

‘When I met Nadir Operli and Seyﬁ Teoman at the
Netherlands Production Platform in 2008, I was immediately taken by their story about two middle aged single
heterosexual men living together in Ankara, taking care of
a young student girl whose parents died in a car accident.
The sweetness of the way the men lived together and
their infatuation of course with the girl was very fresh to
me, as the director and producer behind appeared to be
too.’ Stienette Bosklopper, Circe Films

Director: Maria Peters Script: Maria Peters, Pieter van
de Waterbeemd Production: Shooting Star Filmcompany
(NL) Distribution: A-Film Distribution
The true, exceptional love story between two apparently
ordinary people: Rika, a typical Dutch mother of four children, and Waldemar, a Surinam man seventeen years her
junior. Their love can survive all the presumptions and obstructions of the cruel world outside, but is ﬁnally is unable
to cope with the brutal and devastating power of war.
Director: Paula van der Oest Script: Greg Latter
Production: IDTV Film / Riba Film International (NL),
Comet Film (Ger), Spier Films (SA) Distribution:
A-Film Distribution Sales: Bavaria Film International
Ingrid Jonker is a very talented poet with only one goal;
to ﬁnd love and recognition.

GET REAL!
Pizzamafﬁa

Portable Life

Director & Script: Evert de Beijer Produced by: Ciné Té
Filmproduktie (NL)
In GET REAL! a high-school kid is addicted to a sexy
singer in a computer game. This addiction is proving fatal
until a girl in his class gives him a real kiss.
Short ﬁlm: 12 minutes

Director: Tim Oliehoek Script: Luuk van Bemmelen,
Simon de Waal Production: IDTV Film (NL)
Distribution: Benelux Film Distribution
Bram is best friends with Haas, his cousin. Haas’ uncle
Faris runs the pizzeria owned by Bram’s father. When
the two seniors have a blazing row, Faris opens his own
pizzeria across the street which results, inevitably, in a
pizza war between Bram and Haas. Pizzamafﬁa is a ﬁlm
about family-honour, pride, good and bad, the sense and
nonsense of war and true love, and of course about the
best pizzas in town.

Director and Script: Fleur Boonman Production: Fu
Works (NL) Distribution: Benelux Film Distribution
Where life carries us and where we carry life.

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Dutch Harvest
Viper’s Nest

RELEASES
2ND HALF 2010

Fuchsia the Miniwitch

The Odd One Out
(Gooische Vrouwen) Director: Will Koopman Script:
Frank Houtappels Production: Talpa Fictie (NL), Column
Film (NL), Millstreet Films (NL)
Life in the bourgeois ’t Gooi seems to always run smoothly, but dark clouds are gathering on the horizon for four
girlfriends. A ﬂight seems the only way out…

Director and Script: David Verbeek Production:
Revolver (NL) Distribution: Cinema Delicatessen
Boy hosts in Shanghai’s Club Zeus, like the girl hosts, fulﬁl
their clients’ needs, but whereas for the girls it is mostly
about sex, the boys work according to a totally different
system - with them, the goal is to steal the hearts of their
clients.

(Richting West) Director and Script: Nicole van Kilsdonk
Production: KeyFilm (NL) Distribution: A-Film Distribution
The chaotic life of Claire (38), woman, lover, daughter and
single mother, rushing through the city on her bike with a
child seat, from an ex with a terrible temper to a new lover
who can’t make up his mind. Life and love in the big city.

(Het Geheim) Director: Joram Lürsen Script: Frank Ketelaar Production: IDTV Film (NL) Distribution: A-Film
Distribution Sales: Delphis Films
Ben (8) is fascinated by magic but when his friend Sylvie
disappears, he has to ﬁnd out what is real and what is
illusion.

Her Majesty

Dik Trom

New Kids Turbo

(Majesteit) Director: Peter de Baan Script: Ger Beukenkamp Production: Fu Works, IDTV Film (NL) Distribution: A-Film Distribution
A fascinating and revealing feature ﬁlm about Beatrix as a
woman, a mother, a wife and a queen. Awarded ‘Golden
Calf Best Actor in a Supporting Role’ (Jeroen
Willems), Netherlands Film Festival

Director: Arne Toonen Script: Luuk van Bemmelen,
Mischa Alexander, Wijo Koek Production: Eyeworks Film
& TV Drama (NL) Distribution: Benelux Film Distribution
When Dik Trom moves from Fat Town to Thin City he has
to make some changes, both literally and ﬁguratively.

(Sint) Director and Script: Dick Maas Production: Tom
de Mol Productions, Parachute Pictures (NL) Distribution: Benelux Film Distribution
Saint Nicholas is not the kind-hearted children’s friend
people think he is. In reality he is a cruel blood thirsty
bishop who, whenever there’s a full moon on 5 December,
will try to slaughter as many children as possible.

You’ve Got To
Be Kidding
Call it the Winky Effect. Dutch
live action family ﬁlms have
done spectacular business
at home and abroad in recent
years. Geoffrey Macnab reports.
Mischa Kamp’s Winky’s Horse
(2005), produced by Bos Bros, and
its sequel, Where Is Winky’s Horse
(2007) are two prime examples
of kids’ movies from the Netherlands that have caught the imagination of festivals and audiences
worldwide. The former premiered
internationally in Berlin in 2006
to enthusiastic reviews. The latter
racked up admissions of more
than 350,000 in Holland alone.
Production companies like Bos
Bros, Lemming Film, Eyeworks,
Shooting Star, NL Film and IDTV
Film are all active in the kids’
movie area. It helps, too, that the
Dutch have a strong tradition
of children’s literature and that
there are many books ﬁlmmakers
can draw on.
2010 proved a bumper year for
box-ofﬁce returns on Dutch ﬁlms
made for younger audiences,
with Johan Nijenhuis’ Foeksia the
Miniwitch (NL Film) leading the
way with 274,055 admissions,
while Rita Horst’s Eep!, produced
by Lemming Film, attracted in
excess of 212,000 viewers. Lemming’s Secret Letter (Simone van
Dusseldorp) posted an impressive
ﬁgure of 135,784 attendances.
‘There are (Dutch) producers who
have a vision not only for their
home country but for the interna-

Zhou makes the same argument, pointing out that from Ben
Sombogaart’s The Flying Liftboy
(1998) to Vincent Bal’s Minoes
(2001), from the Winky movies
to Ineke Houtman’s The Indian
(2009), ﬁlms ‘reﬂect a society
that is becoming more and more
multicultural. They take a very
real-life approach…they’re simple
stories but they are not simplistic
stories.’

tional market,’ suggests Xiaojuan
Zhou, president of Montrealbased world sales agent Delphis
Films, which has enjoyed success
selling Dutch kids’ fare in the
international market. ‘They pay
attention to screenwriting, acting and directing. What is really
amazing about these Dutch movies is that they are not competing
with Germany or France in terms
of budget or special effects. Their
stories are mostly based on reallife with a dose of fantasy.’

At ﬁrst sight, Zhou acknowledges,
Winky looked a tough proposition. ‘We were, like, OK, this is
a Chinese girl in Holland with
Sinterklaas. How are we going
to sell it?’ Nevertheless, Winky’s
Horse was released theatrically in
France, Spain and Scandinavia.
‘And it was sold even in Malaysia,
a Muslim country…and even in
Iran,’ the Delphis boss points out.
‘I was very surprised they chose
the ﬁlm. It’s Sinterklaas! But
then, I got a big surprise at the
turndown of a Chinese broadcaster who rejected the ﬁlm because
‘it fails to reﬂect the modern day
China where kids are dressed in
Gaps instead of an old-fashioned
red ﬂowery coat that shows how
Westerners perceive China!’’

‘The Dutch are
making movies
that are fun but
are at the same
time educational’
‘The Dutch are making movies
that are fun but are at the same
time educational,’ suggests
Claudia Landsberger, Head of
Eye International. Winky, she
observes, is about a Chinese girl
adapting to life in a new country (the Netherlands.) Amid the
humour and pathos, these ﬁlms
have an international perspective that appeals to both foreign
kids and festivals. ‘The Dutch are
clever in making these ﬁlms small
enough for kids to digest and to
learn something while they are
having a good time,’ Landsberger
says. ‘That’s why these ﬁlms are
so popular and why programmers
from around the world are keen
on showing them.’

Both Winky movies were released
on DVD too in North America,
Germany and Japan. Dubbing
costs may be high (€15,000 to
€20,000 per ﬁlm) but certain distributors are increasingly willing
to take on the costs in order to release the best independent kids’
movies in their territories.
Some observers are surprised
that sales outﬁts like Delphis in
Canada or High Point in the UK
so often take on sales duties on
Dutch kids’ movies. (High Point

handled Martin Koolhoven’s Winter In Wartime.) Zhou argues that
the location of Delphis in North
America helps give these ﬁlms
‘another leg’ when it comes to
ﬁnding audiences in North America and Latin America. Meanwhile, she is a constant presence
at European markets and kids’
festivals and has strong contacts
with Asian buyers.
Zhou ﬁrst started handling Dutch
children’s ﬁlms in the late 1990s,
when she was working for MediaMax International La Fête. Twelve
years on, she is handling as much
Dutch children’s fare as ever. ‘The
success is still limited,’ she cautions. ‘These are niche movies. I
can’t say that they’re making millions of dollars. What we are doing is a boutique operation. They
are not like Luc Besson movies.’
Nobody is suggesting that Dutch
kids’ movies are blockbusters but
they are still selling briskly everywhere from Europe to Asia. Their
exposure at international festivals
has helped put them in the shop
window. Zhou highlights the
importance of events like Berlin’s
Generation section for launching
these movies. In the longer run,
Zhou is pushing for Dutch producers of kids’ movies to become
more involved in international coproduction – to consider shooting
their movies in English as well as
Dutch and even bringing North
American cast to some projects.
‘I do hope in that way, in the next
10 years, we can really succeed
to bring Dutch movies even to a
higher level,’ the Delphis boss
proclaims.

From 2011 the Netherlands Film
Fund is allocating €300,000 per year
to stimulate the international distribution of Dutch ﬁlms. Support of up
€25,000 per ﬁlm will be made, and
is expected to help with distribution costs, dubbing costs, press and
pr expenses and festival travel to
speciﬁc international festivals. The
Fund is also raising its co-production budget by €300,000 per year to
1,8 million euro. “International cooperation is getting more and more
important to get ﬁlms ﬁnanced and
to raise the artistic value of our ﬁlms

SUPPORT OF UP TO
€25,000 PER FILM
WILL BE MADE
as well as to stimulate Dutch ﬁlms
being shown outside our borders,’
comments Film Fund director
Doreen Boonekamp. ‘I am convinced that raising our annual budget for international co-productions
and at the same time supporting
the export of Dutch ﬁlm will give an
extra impulse to the international
appeal of the Dutch ﬁlm industry’.
The EYE Film Institute Netherlands
already supports the promotion of
Dutch ﬁlms abroad to the tune of
€600,000 per year.

FUNKY DUTCH
SHORTS

The General on instant cinema

Two Dutch shorts, Jeroen Annokkeé’s Sugar and Albert ’t Hooft and Paco
Vink’s Little Quentin have been selected for the International Competition
of the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival that runs February 4-12 2011. In
addition, Evert de Beijer’s GET REAL! competes in the festival’s Lab Competition. The ﬁlm will also screen in Berlin’s Generation 14+ Competition.

EYE LAUNCHES
WEBSITE
INSTANT CINEMA

Sugar, 9 minutes long and produced by LEV Pictures, shows how things go
from bad to worse for Bert after his scantily-clad neighbour Klaasje comes
to borrow a cup of sugar. The dialogue-free Little Quentin, produced by iL
Luster Productions tells the story of an oversexed bunny, a murder, a coverup and the discovery of a terrible secret. The ﬁlm was produced by Ciné-Té
Filmproduktie.

In January 2011 the EYE Film Institute Netherlands launched the
internet platform Instant Cinema
(http://instantcinema.org) to showcase experimental and art ﬁlms
from across the world. The initiative
is the brainchild of ﬁlmmaker and
multimedia expert René Daalder,
and is designed to make the work of
experimental ﬁlmmakers and artists accessible to wider audiences.
The website features both classics
from the experimental genre as well
as new ﬁlms by young ﬁlmmakers.
Instant Cinema was launched at
the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Sugar

THINGS GO
FROM BAD TO
WORSE
IN SUGAR

For many years, experimental ﬁlms
and art ﬁlms have been almost exclusively screened in museums and
at ﬁlm festivals. With the launch of
the Instant Cinema website, EYE
aims to generate more interest in
this important art form. By making
experimental cinema available to a
wider audience, EYE hopes to contribute to the art-historical context
and appreciation of a ﬁlm genre
that is relatively unknown to many
ﬁlm lovers.

BINGER ACTION
The New Year kicks off in frenetic
fashion for the Amsterdam-based
Binger Lab whose current crop of
writers, directors and producers, as
well as notable alumni, are presenting and pitching their lab projects at
Berlin 2011. The Berlinale will stage
two world premieres of projects
developed at the Binger, Bullhead
by Michael R. Roskam in Panorama
and Swans by Hugo Vieira da Silva in
Forum. The opening ﬁlm of Generation, Griff the Invisible, is directed
by Leon Ford and produced by

When We Are Big
on instant cinema

Nicole O’Donohue, both of whom
are currently at the Binger developing their project The Mechanicals.
At the Berlin Co-production Market
the Macedonian ﬁlmmaker Aneta
Lesnikovska is pitching her Bingerdeveloped project Loud.

CORRECTION
In the last issue of SEE NL we
incorrectly applied the title Vivan
Las Antipodas to the still of Lost
Down Memory Lane, produced by
Memphis Film & TV. Apologies.

28

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26-01-2011 10:29:20

Tod der Maria Malibran

EYE RESTORES
SCHROETER CLASSICS

In January 2011 the Pompidou Centre in Paris organised a comprehensive
retrospective of the ﬁlms of German master Werner Schroeter, who died in
April 2010. To mark this retrospective, the EYE Film Institute Netherlands,
in collaboration with Filmmuseum Münchner Stadtmuseum, restored three
cult ﬁlms from Schroeter’s early career: Eika Katappa (1969), Der Tod der Maria Malibran (1971) and Johannas Traum (1971-1975).
Eika Katappa and Der Tod der Maria Malibran subsequently screened as part
of the Signals-Regained programme during IFFR 2011. The ﬁlms will also
be screened at the EYE premises in Amsterdam in March 2011 as part of the
E*Cinema evenings.

FUNDING
QUALITY

The Rotterdam International Film
Festival (IFFR) proved even busier
than usual for Hubert Bals Fund
staff this year following the selection
of 27 HBF-backed ﬁlms across the
festival sections. These included
three in Tiger competition, Sivaroj
Kongsakul’s Eternity (Thailand),
the Sri Lankan Flying Fish (Sanjeewa
Pushpakumara) and Vipin Vijay’s
The Image Threads (India). Eternity
received digital production funding
in 2009 while Flying Fish received
post-production funding in 2010.

COLOPHON
SEE NL is published four
times per year by EYE Film
Institute Netherlands and The
Netherlands Film Fund and
is distributed to international
ﬁlm professionals. Editors in
chief: Claudia Landsberger
(EYE), Jonathan Mees (Netherlands Film Fund) Executive
editor: Nick Cunningham Con-

The Image Thread is testimony to the
power of endurance having received
its HBF script and project development funding in 2004. ‘We were
very happy about the situation this
year,’ commented Fund chief Iwana
Chronis. ‘The fact that there are so
many Hubert Bals Fund ﬁlms in the
selection this year gives a
really great signal about the overall
quality of these ﬁlms.’

ANTONIAK’S NINO
FOR BERLIN

Life According to Nino, the latest project from Amsterdam-based ﬁlmmaker
Urszula Antoniak, has been selected for the 2011 Berlin Co-production
Market. The €1.5 million project, which Antoniak is looking to shoot Summer 2011, concerns two brothers trying to cope with the death of their
mother and their father’s subsequent descent into acute depression. ‘It is
a very ambitious project but it’s also very difﬁcult, ironic and philosophical,’ commented the director before the Netherlands Production Platform
event in September 2010, where the project was ﬁrst pitched. ‘A big, dark
story but also comic, with special effects, and with three different age groups
addressed. One child, Nino, becomes introverted. The other becomes selfdestructive and practically plays with the idea of death. And then there is the
father who is knocked down by the death of his wife. We have three different
approaches to dealing with grief.’

Just the facts
Geographical Distribution
of Dutch Films in 2010
This diagram indicates the percentage of Dutch ﬁlms distributed across international markets
in 2010. The Europe ﬁgure of
67% marks a 3% increase on the
2009 ﬁgure. Other growth areas
were Latin America, up a single
percentage point on 2009 and
the Middle East which posted a
two per cent increase.

Europe

67%
North America

7%
Asia

10%
Middle East

5%
Africa

2%
Latin America

6%

Distribution to language area
The international distribution of
Dutch ﬁlms in 2009 to territories
as determined by indigenous language spoken.

Australia

2%

FRENCH

12%

SPANISH

PORTUGUESE

GERMAN

6%

7%

8%

ARAB

CHINESE

JAPANESE

4%

4%

4%

ENGLISH

57%
A selection of Dutch ﬁlms due
for release in early 2011 showing the percentage of overseas
production investment.

Title

Director

Lead Producer
Netherlands

Co-producers

Budget (€ 1000)

Percentage foreign
investment

Tony Ten

Mischa Kamp

Lemming Film

MA.JA.DE. (D), Unaﬁlm (B)

3.834

38

Brownian Movement

Nanouk Leopold

Circe Films

COIN (Ger), Serendipity (B)

2.724

33

Black Butterﬂies

Paula van der Oest

IDTV Film

Spier Films (SA), Comet Film (Ger)

4.523

31

Portable life

Fleur Boonman

Fu Works Productions

Savage Film (B)

711

23

Isabelle

Ben Sombogaart

IDTV Film

Samsa Film (LUX)

2.150

24

Sonny Boy

Maria Peters

Shooting Star

Menuet (B)

5.124

4

30

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26-01-2011 10:29:25

ACTOR PROFILE

Shooting Star 2011: Sylvia Hoeks
Star of Jos Stelling’s Duska,
Ben Sombogaart’s The Storm
and, most recently, Rudolf
van den Berg’s Dutch submission for the Foreign-language
Oscar Tirza, Sylvia Hoeks is
the 2011 choice of Shooting
Star for the Netherlands. The
Shooting Stars annual gala is
organised during the Berlinale
by European Film Promotion
(EFP) to showcase the leading acting talents from across
Europe.
“Being famous, becoming a ‘star’
is not on top of my wish list,”
Hoeks claims. “First of all I’m an
actress. But if being well known
for my work gives me the opportunity to choose between projects,
then that is fantastic!
“Any kind of appreciation by experienced people in the industry is
wonderful especially when in this
case it leads to being a ‘Shooting
Star’ I’ll await the consequences
with much joy.”
Hoeks’ agenda for 2011 is ﬁlling
up quickly. Firstly she will star in
the feature thriller The Gang of
Oss, directed by André van Duren
and produced by Matthijs van
Heijningen. She will then shoot a
short ﬁlm with director Mark de
Cloe before pairing up again with
director Jos Stelling to take the
lead in his international co-production The Girl and Death. There
are also many plans for theatre
and on-going television work, but
she is keeping her options open
for more ﬁlm projects.
“I hope the best is yet to come,”
she stresses. “Maybe it’s for the
best we don’t know what the future holds. The unknown keeps
you sharp. Curiosity can also be a
drive. I’m approaching an age old
enough to play character roles.
Who knows? Because I tend to
interfere with everything I want
to write more and possibly direct.
But my main love is acting.”

31

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26-01-2011 10:29:27

A Life in the Year of
Lotte Verbeek –
Shooting Star 2010
Lotte Verbeek’s career trajectory
since starring in Urszula Antoniak’s
Nothing Personal in 2009 has been
meteoric. Feted for her skills at
countless international ﬁlm festivals,
picking up best actress awards at

EYE_SEENL_02_v06_cl.indd 32

Locarno and Marrakech, she was
presented as the Dutch Shooting Star
at Berlin 2010, the year in which she
was signed up to play the role of
Guilia Farnese opposite Jeremy Irons
in Neil Jordan’s The Borgias tv series
for Showtime. She also starred in
Maurizio Zaccaro’s Le regazze dello
swing, also for television, as well as
Maria Peters’ Sonny Boy (release

2011). Agent Marieke Verharen comments: ‘As a result of the success of
Nothing Personal Lotte was asked to
be the Shooting Star at the Berlinale
last year. This event is important to
make (international) contacts with
directors, agents and casting directors, from all over the world, who are
all in search of the best new talents.
Both the success of Nothing Personal

and Shooting Star contributed to her
success. But this was only possible
with Lotte’s talent and energy.’
Lotte herself demands the ﬁnal word.
‘The last one and a half years I have
been so thrilled by all the new meetings, the travels, the opportunities,
the rewards and the awards,’
she exclaims. ‘I realise I’m a very
lucky bastard!’